Full Motion Video Games, What?

I watched a BAFTA gaming conference type video a little while back and something was mentioned that I think would make for an interesting topic / question this week.

It was an idea that completely slipped my mind these last few years and it had me thinking about how it would’ve had an impact on today’s gaming culture / industry if the idea stuck and if it was indeed a success.

Have you lovely guys and gals ever heard about full motion video games?

It’s a rather old method of making games and was especially popular in the 1980’s. What this entailed was the capture of real life actors or using recycled footage and building a game around that material. A sort of “interactive movie” if you will. I’ll leave this link here if you want to read about it. What grabbed everyone’s attention was the absolute “realism”.

I never played much of these games – I think it would be one in total and I’m fairly certain when saying that I much prefer the way games are being made in this reality at the present moment in time.

If this fad of game making stuck and it received positive feedback from the gamers, would this be what we are playing today?

It is impossible to know that for a fact today, but imagine playing a game like FarCry 3 or inFamous 2 if it was made in this fashion. Would it even be possible?

I highly doubt that.

It was a rather interesting affair in the arcades at that time, but I think it was just one of the stages gaming went through. Like today’s fascination with the modern military shooters – but who knows, we may look back in time and look at today’s games and think: “Why on Earth were those blokes trying to make something like that?”

I’ll leave you this week with the following question: Do you think that in the unlikely event of full motion video games taking the spotlight back in the day, that it would change the way our beloved games are made today, or will we still have the excellence of today’s interactive stories?

Of course I’ve heard of FMV games you young whippersnapper! They were purported to be the future of gaming, back in the early 90’s when ‘multimedia’ was the buzzword of the decade. Alas, most – perhaps even all all FMV games are about as playable as complex DVD menus. Now please excuse me while I shake my fist and yell at you kids who have never heard of FMV games to get off my lawn.

retroFuture

One of the really cruddy aspects of FMV games was that in pursuit of realism (in this case, real actors and/or scenery) designers had to forgo much of the creative freedom of drawing graphics from scratch. Budgetary restrictions meant often resorting to using amateur actors and embarrassingly shoddy props and locations. They basically wound up looking worse than a low-budget made-for-TV movie (they were basically porno quality) This pretty much undermined much of what people imagined what was possible with this technology. Here is a particularly notorious and laughable example of the abysmally low production standards of these games… Space Pirates (1992 American Laser Games)

Elmar Naude

hahaha that video is hilarious!

retroFuture

It’s so embarrassing. I pity the actors who were forced to “star”in this shit to pay the rent. Actually, I pity the players who were tricked into purchasing this stinky piece of software.

Elmar Naude

the stupid thing about it though is that the same thing will always happen in the same way.. there is no way in my mind to implement AI in this fashion… but it still looks fun to play.. if you have to repeat a level though you will know exactly where all the enemies will appear.. so no I dont think it would have changed anything because it is a very limited method

gamerDude

I much prefer the way games are made currently.

Marko Thabo Swanepoel

I have this strange theory where I think a game might venture into the uncanny valley if its graphics are as realistic as our normal every day life. Like things will be so lifelike that it will just feel a bit… weird. I think that’s why FMV games weren’t so popularly received back in the day.

If a game would have hyper-realistic graphics then I would prefer it has something to do with aliens or mutants and not something you can see on a stroll through Afghanistan. Gaming is about escapism and if I can play something that could be accurately relived by taking a gun and walking in a desert, then it’s not something I would rush out to experience.

I’m just talking out my ass here though.

retroFuture

I don’t think that the uncanny valley theory is the reason why FMV games failed. They failed because of their grainy low-color depth / lousy resolution (not dissimilar from watching a postage stamp sized TV), their crummy production values and, not least, their almost non-existent levels of interactivity. Basically, they failed because they stank.

Koos Schwartz

I think with today’s level of in-engine realism it kinda defeats the purpose.

Koos Schwartz

Besides, they might make Ben Affleck star in the next Assasins Creed.

retroFuture

Dragons Lair (1983 Cinematronics) is one of the more fondly remembered FMV games (although strictly speaking, this was actually cell animation, but the principle is the same) It was animated by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth and stored its data on laserdisc. Whilst visually quite an achievement and much more aesthetically appealling than so much of the low-budget drek that FMV was notorious for, the gameplay was nothing more than a string of unprompted quicktime events.